Partners in the Indo-Pacific

ASCF REPORT, May 7, 2025
More than four decades ago, Deng Xiaoping counseled that the PRC should “disguise its ambition and hide its claws.” Xi Jinping has ignored his predecessor’s advice—engaging in the largest peacetime military buildup in history, supersizing his navy, tripling his nuclear force, vowing to conquer Taiwan, making outlandish claims in the South China Sea, constructing and militarizing illegal islands, hacking and sieging the critical infrastructure of America and its allies, lashing out at those who dare defy his regime. As a consequence of China’s actions, China’s neighbors are awake to the PRC’s ambitions and aware of the PRC’s claws. Xi is beginning to learn that other countries also have claws…